#54: “Tell Me That You Love Me”

I met Tamari two weeks ago as S and I were taking a break from our Daygame session. It was a beautiful day and we were sitting on the stone bench that runs along the outside of Leicester Square, but a touch too warm for my tastes. I could feel a few, microscopic beads of sweat on the back of my neck and so I’d taken to carrying my leather jacket around with me, and then throwing it back on when I went to do a set.

I saw Tamari approaching us from our left. I couldn’t see much of her: just a thick set of pouty, pink lips poking out from underneath a baseball cap, together with sportswear wrapped around her tight body. She was carrying a box of fish and chips: a possible Anglophile. I let her get closer to us then forced an IOI out of her by lasering in on her eyes. Once we’d held eye contact for a second I looked away and smirked.

“I’m doing this one.” I told S.

I quickly stood up, threw my jacket on, and walked over to her. She came to a stop easily and looked up at me with a pair of dark eyes. I saw now that she had very strong, dark eyebrows as well as a slightly wider jaw, giving her a very structured face.

“Excuse me, I just wanted to come and say hello. You’ve got this cute little hat on and I like it,” I said as I grabbed the lip of the hat and wiggled it around and side to side.

Our conversation moved forward but wasn’t particularly free-flowing; I put it down to the language barrier (she was from Georgia). It meant that the set was largely uneventful, which I suppose is a good thing, because it indicates that all my subcommunication was in the right place. I took her number after five minutes and returned to S.

“See. I told you. I knew I was going to close an eight today.”

*****

Tamari responded to my feeler a few hours after I sent it, and the next day I moved into pinging. She ghosted on my first date request, though, and so I archived her. Then eight days later… :

I saw her message as I was leaving work and instantly my spidey sense kicked in. I knew the deal: give her super low investment responses as if I don’t care anymore until she date requests herself, which is exactly what happened. The thought of a man a girl is attracted to not being interested in her is like a woman’s kryptonite.

Oh and here’s another screenshot which gives you a taste of what was instore (and yes I know I misspelt katsu). The last part about “Jerry” I didn’t understand but it was definitely callback humour to our set two weeks before.

I met her on Monday, fifteen days after the set took place. Initially, as per the screenshot, we were meant to meet at 7:30, but she sent me a message saying she’d be late:

You can see where this was going… In particular notice how after finding out that I live near to our meeting point she moves the date later.

9pm rolled around and she was getting lost trying to find me, even though I’d sent her a picture of where to meet, and so I told her to stand still, take a photo of where she was, and I would find her. When I did find her, I stopped about 20 metres away and waved her over. She didn’t move. I waved her over again and raised an eyebrow in expectation, the way a parent might do when their child is trying to hold their breath until they pass out. Eventually she swanned over with a cigarette in hand.

Tamari was certainly wearing an odd outfit. She had a lovely summer dress on and flowery converse shoes, but with a huge, woolly jumper lumped over the top. It was pretty cold and so the bare legs were a plus, and I could smell her perfume as well, but then immediately she told me she could only stay until 10pm.

I frogmarched her to the nearest bar to my flat and we sat down on some sofas with a beer each.

“This is an interesting ring,” I remarked straight after we sat down.

I pulled her hand towards me and looked at it, then kept her hand in mine as I talked some nonsense. Seemed like a good start.

“You could do some damage with this.” I said, flopping her hand around. “Have you ever been in a fight?”

“No. Have you?”

“A couple.” (small r-selected DHV)

Then I noticed a small tattoo on her wrist, and inspected that.

“Do you have any more tattoos?”

“Yes,” she replied as she showed me another small tattoo on her other wrist, and another on her shoulder, which she had to pull down her woolly jumper to show me.

Then my hand was touching the ends of her hair, and up into the base of her neck, and I softly stroked her legs (shaved) with the back of my hand. Whenever I pulled her hand into mine, she allowed it.

On the other hand, she twice rejected my command to sit a bit closer. I felt as if I was doing long range physical escalation with my gangly orangutan arms reaching out to paw at her. In the moment, I valued the proximity higher than the physical contact and so I wasn’t surprised when she rejected my first kiss close attempt, which came within roughly 15 minutes of us sitting down. I was moving everything quickly because of the signs I’d received so far and her supposed curfew. She was continually checking the time.

My second kiss close attempt was more overt as I looked at her collection of necklaces and tried to tip her chin up (I prefer to make the first one more covert: leaning in and seeing if she keeps her face facing me rather than turning away or down).

“No, I am not like that.” she replied.

“It’s my job to try…” I came back, on autopilot. “You know all these necklaces make you look a bit like Mr. T.”

“Who’s that?” she asked, and so I took great pleasure in getting my phone out and showing her a picture of the man in question.

We’d finished our drinks and my forebrain had had enough. This girl is just too much effort, nothing’s going to happen, I thought.

“Let’s go.”

As we approached the street to cross it, she suddenly grabbed my hand, and I think it set off a chain of reactions in my brain which told me to just go for it.

We crossed to the traffic island in the middle of the street; Tamari was still looking at her phone.

“What time do the trains run until? I have to get back out to [far away place].”

“They run until after midnight… anyway, listen, I live just down there,” I gestured towards my flat which was a two minutes’ walk away, “let’s go back and have a quick drink and then I’ll take you back to the train station.”

I assumed that I was never going to see her again after that night if I didn’t fuck her, so I thought I’d just go for it. But really, I should have weighed up the signals I’d got so far: her messaging out of the blue, her acceptance of my kino, her bare legs, her suggestion to meet later, the fact that she seemed a little loopy, etc. I guess I have my calibration to thank for my decision to pull her home right there and then.

We walked back to mine and she stopped on the threshold. She gave me a cat-like look; I could tell she was loving the sexual tension of that micro-moment. I imagine she was getting off on the anticipation of whether I’d hold my cool.

“I should go.” Her tone told me she had no intention of going, but she didn’t move towards me either.

“Come on, we’ll just go upstairs for 15 minutes.”

“Okay, only for 15 minutes.” she replied in the same sexy voice, before she swanned in.

It wasn’t plain sailing, not by a long shot. She refused to take her shoes off and we spent 20 minutes just standing in my flat, drinks in hand, as I tried again to kiss her. We’d talk and I’d edge in closer, then go for the kiss when we were literally touching groins, and she’d turn her head down. Then I’d turn away myself and walk away, sit down, and start the process all over again.

We began to play a kind of Questions Game:

“Why did you come to England?”

“There are too many rules at home.”

And later on:

“When did you last have sex?”

“Five months ago.” Winner.

“How about you? Was it yesterday?”

I paused, smirked, then looked down bashfully. “It was actually. Does that make me a bad man?”

I kept on using that line, especially after the failed kiss attempts, and slowly she convinced herself that I was a player extraordinaire.

“You take advantage of girls don’t you?” she asked me on multiple occasions, each time with that same cat-like smile. “You use them and leave them.”

After that she moved over to near my bed, but closer to my front door. She could have turned around and left at any moment.

I’d had enough by now, it was time to make a big move and get her to shit or get off the pot. I turned her around and gently pushed her down onto the bed. She fell onto it, so I climbed on top of her and finally kissed her.

“I’m not that kind of girl,” she said as I pulled away and then ran my finger up her leg. “We can’t do this!”.

I gently laid my hand around her throat and she absolutely loved it; it sounded as if she could have just cum from that alone. If I tried to move my hand away she’d move it back.

With my other hand I started fingering her which was easy considering her dress. I’m fairly sure I felt a tampon but there was no blood: perfect.

“I have to use the bathroom.”

This was a serious make or break moment and I waited as she took what seemed like an inordinate amount of time to come back. She still had her shoes on as well so I was terrified that she would just leave straight away.

Thankfully, she didn’t leave. She came back in and relief flooded myself system. I closed the door as she came in and locked it. We both knew that this attempt at the summit would be a success. I pushed her onto the bed and we continued to make out. Then she pulled her head away:

“Tell me you love me.” What the fuck?! WHAT THE FUCK?! “I can’t have sex without feelings.”

Now that left me in a pickle. Part of me wanted to say yes, in case it would seal the deal, but another part of me thought I’m not saying that! Luckily, the latter part of me won out. I think it was a test.

“You say it first.” I replied. She didn’t say anything, of course.

It was done in exactly the same way as her asking me for a picture of my lunch. As a sidenote, I would have been more up for sending a picture had Tamari been complying from the start, but I wanted to keep up the pretence that me dating her was me doing her a favour.

I continued escalating until she asked me “do you have something?” and so finally, finally!, I grabbed a condom from my drawer and put it on the bed next to us. Then I got my dick out and she started wanking me off.

“We can’t do this!” she said, but yet again it was said with a tone implying we shouldn’t do this, but I’m such a bad girl.

Naturally I ignored her, pulled her pants off, and stuck my dick in, and she started moaning like an animal. +1 and Georgian flag.

Still though, she gave pushback at every stage of sex. It was hard work getting her dress off and she refused to take her shoes and bra off. It was absolutely bizarre, but I didn’t care much at that stage because I was already fucking her. I fucked her twice, and it was only after the second time that she seemed to become more submissive. She clearly loved hard dominance which I guess goes with the territory of being looney tunes. She also wouldn’t tell me how many guys she’s fucked before, so I assumed her N was astronomical.

“You fucked me like you said you would.” she said with a contented look on her face. She continued: “You are a good player.” How kind of you to say! “On the day we met another man approached me.”

“Uhuh?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see his message?”

She grinned and immediately fetched her phone to show me his feeler to which she hadn’t replied. It was the easiest thing I’d got her to do all evening.

It read:

“Is this the crazy Georgian designer? It’s Nick from Greece.”

It seemed like a Daygamer’s feeler, so, “Nick from Greece”, if you’re reading this, then no hard feelings, although I’d recommend not trying to frame every girl as being crazy. Believe me, I’ve tried it! You can only do it if they like you enough. In fact, throughout the LMR she’d asked me whether I thought she was crazy to which I’d replied “a little bit” and she would giggle. We can’t all be winners.

I didn’t want her to sleep over even though she continually tried to suggest there wouldn’t be any more trains. I got my phone out and showed her but insisted that I walk her to the train station against her wishes. We said goodbye and I scratched my head. I was genuinely confused by the nights events. The date had gone from a date to nowhere to a lay. Most of the Game had been done on the street, two weeks previously, where I’d make such an impression that she looked to me in her time of horniness. Then the rest was on show in breaking down her LMR.

I sent a +1 text out to Younger, Hotter, Tighter, Whiter because I’d ran into him on the way to the date:

“+1, Georgian flag.

Can you feel the t-sizzle?”

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown